Monday, February 20, 2017

Montenegro Coup

Montenegro is a fascinating (and GORGEOUS) little country. A by little I mean little. It is a little smaller than Connecticut. It was a province of Yugoslavia, then part of Serbia after the break up, but is now it's own country.

And it was recently the scene of an attempted coup by Russian backed military / political party groups.

All because they have applied to NATO (should they be in NATO- that is another story entirely). The election in October was for the President (who has run the country since 1991 - so "President") and it was relatively free and he was opposed by a party backed by Russia. A few days before the election, the country was warned that Russians, disguised as Montenegrins, would cause upheaval and try to steal the election. They were found, arrested and some deported back to Russia.

You may wonder why Russia cares. Well, geo-politically, Montenegro is the last warm water port in the Mediterranean Europe that isn't part of NATO. And, it would be a little embarrassing to have them join.

But more than that Montenegro has a rather large Russian population of second homes. You see, Montenegro is gorgeous and they allow Russian, Ukrainians, Germans and Americans to buy there. It won't look good if Russian second homes are protected by NATO. And, yes, of course I want a second home there (but the list of what I want is long and getting longer every day :-).

Here are some of the pictures we took in Montenegro in 2015 with friends.

John and Sue in the Square in Kotor (they hiked up the hill to the old fort and took the picture at the top of this page too.)

Jane and I outside Kotor's Walls.

The 1,000 year old Kotor Cathedral that had been Catholic and is now Orthodox.